Systems and methods as disclosed herein are intended to address existing problems in the fields of physical therapy, other kinds of rehabilitative medicine, athletic training, orthopaedics, podiatry, chiropractics, coaching, personal training, strength and conditioning, health insurance, worker's compensation, ergonomics and workplace safety, the military and other tactical fields, including first responders, sports and athletics and finally, those who teach in these and related fields.
It is very difficult, and therefore rarely undertaken, to accurately capture iterative human motion in a manner that can be studied and analyzed, assess and objectively quantify that human movement, identify pathological movement patterns, (or pathokinematics), diagnose the root cause(s) of those pathokinematics, and apply corrective interventions to change and ultimately improve or eliminate them. This has been a barrier to improvement in the areas injury prevention, rehabilitation of injury when it has occurred, and the mitigation of pain and improvement in performance.
Because human movement is extremely complex and controlled by multiple systems in the body and brain, most of those seeking injury prevention, fast and effective rehabilitation and performance improvement, make assumptions about an individual's movement patterns based on others/previous experience, static body position, post-surgical instructions for returning an individual to a basic level of function, and perhaps the naked eye while the person is in a laboratory setting. For those lucky enough to have access to a biomechanical laboratory, (which is inaccessible to most of the population), often too much data and information is generated to be useful to most people, back on the job, on the field, or during the game. Today it is impractical (at best) for those in the field to look at, record and adequately assess people in motion, doing what they do: be that sports, sitting, squatting and so forth; and there currently does not exist an algorithm built to assess that movement (if it were captured), diagnose the underlying causes of poor movement patterns that lead to injury and limit performance, drive decisions about what observed movements mean, nor apply the appropriate correctives to address deficits or limitations.
When coaching for performance, attempting to strengthen to prevent injury, or rehabilitating an injury, it is impossible to measure the success of our interventions, and healthcare dollars spent, if we do not have an objective record of the “before” and “after” patient, athlete or subject. Add to that the difficulty of instructing patients, athletes and subjects without visual information and explanation; the time it takes to do it if undertaken; and the relationship between a subjects' understanding of the problem and the changes required to fix it, and his or her compliance with the instructions of the medical practitioner, coach or caregiver, the likelihood of being able to prevent or rehabilitate successfully an injury using traditional coaching methodologies becomes exceedingly low, and tracking injury prevention to rehabilitative methods becomes a matter of educated guesswork rather than scientific correlation.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a system and method to capture movement while it is happening, play it back for the subject by way of education and understanding of the corrective plan being prescribed, and measure and prove the success or efficacy of interventions.